OT: Capitalists and Other Psychopaths

[Charles Marqs]

Capitalists and Other Psychopaths

By WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ
Published: May 12, 2012

THERE is an ongoing debate in this country about the rich: who they
are, what their social role may be, whether they are good or bad.
Well, consider the following. A 2010 study found that 4 percent of a
sample of corporate managers met a clinical threshold for being
labeled psychopaths, compared with 1 percent for the population at
large. (However, the sample was not representative, as the study�s
authors have noted.) Another study concluded that the rich are more
likely to lie, cheat and break the law.

The only thing that puzzles me about these claims is that anyone would
find them surprising. Wall Street is capitalism in its purest form,
and capitalism is predicated on bad behavior. This should hardly be
news. The English writer Bernard Mandeville asserted as much nearly
three centuries ago in a satirical-poem-cum-philosophical-treatise
called �The Fable of the Bees.�

�Private Vices, Publick Benefits� read the book�s subtitle. A
Machiavelli of the economic realm � a man who showed us as we are, not
as we like to think we are � Mandeville argued that commercial society
creates prosperity by harnessing our natural impulses: fraud, luxury
and pride. By �pride� Mandeville meant vanity; by �luxury� he meant
the desire for sensuous indulgence. These create demand, as every ad
man knows. On the supply side, as we�d say, was fraud: �All Trades and
Places knew some Cheat, / No Calling was without Deceit.�

In other words, Enron, BP, Goldman, Philip Morris, G.E., Merck, etc.,
etc. Accounting fraud, tax evasion, toxic dumping, product safety
violations, bid rigging, overbilling, perjury. The Walmart bribery
scandal, the News Corp. hacking scandal � just open up the business
section on an average day. Shafting your workers, hurting your
customers, destroying the land. Leaving the public to pick up the tab.
These aren�t anomalies; this is how the system works: you get away
with what you can and try to weasel out when you get caught.

I always found the notion of a business school amusing. What kinds of
courses do they offer? Robbing Widows and Orphans? Grinding the Faces
of the Poor? Having It Both Ways? Feeding at the Public Trough? There
was a documentary several years ago called �The Corporation� that
accepted the premise that corporations are persons and then asked what
kind of people they are. The answer was, precisely, psychopaths:
indifferent to others, incapable of guilt, exclusively devoted to
their own interests.

There are ethical corporations, yes, and ethical businesspeople, but
ethics in capitalism is purely optional, purely extrinsic. To expect
morality in the market is to commit a category error. Capitalist
values are antithetical to Christian ones. (How the loudest Christians
in our public life can also be the most bellicose proponents of an
unbridled free market is a matter for their own consciences.)
Capitalist values are also antithetical to democratic ones. Like
Christian ethics, the principles of republican government require us
to consider the interests of others. Capitalism, which entails the
single-minded pursuit of profit, would have us believe that it�s every
man for himself.

There�s been a lot of talk lately about �job creators,� a phrase
begotten by Frank Luntz, the right-wing propaganda guru, on the ghost
of Ayn Rand. The rich deserve our gratitude as well as everything they
have, in other words, and all the rest is envy.

First of all, if entrepreneurs are job creators, workers are wealth
creators. Entrepreneurs use wealth to create jobs for workers. Workers
use labor to create wealth for entrepreneurs � the excess
productivity, over and above wages and other compensation, that goes
to corporate profits. It�s neither party�s goal to benefit the other,
but that�s what happens nonetheless.

Also, entrepreneurs and the rich are different and only partly
overlapping categories. Most of the rich are not entrepreneurs; they
are executives of established corporations, institutional managers of
other kinds, the wealthiest doctors and lawyers, the most successful
entertainers and athletes, people who simply inherited their money or,
yes, people who work on Wall Street.

MOST important, neither entrepreneurs nor the rich have a monopoly on
brains, sweat or risk. There are scientists � and artists and scholars
� who are just as smart as any entrepreneur, only they are interested
in different rewards. A single mother holding down a job and putting
herself through community college works just as hard as any hedge fund
manager. A person who takes out a mortgage � or a student loan, or who
conceives a child � on the strength of a job she knows she could lose
at any moment (thanks, perhaps, to one of those job creators) assumes
as much risk as someone who starts a business.

Enormous matters of policy depend on these perceptions: what we�re
going to tax, and how much; what we�re going to spend, and on whom.
But while �job creators� may be a new term, the adulation it expresses
� and the contempt that it so clearly signals � are not. �Poor
Americans are urged to hate themselves,� Kurt Vonnegut wrote in
�Slaughterhouse-Five.� And so, �they mock themselves and glorify their
betters.� Our most destructive lie, he added, �is that it is very easy
for any American to make money.� The lie goes on. The poor are lazy,
stupid and evil. The rich are brilliant, courageous and good. They
shower their beneficence upon the rest of us.

Mandeville believed the individual pursuit of self-interest could
redound to public benefit, but unlike Adam Smith, he didn�t think it
did so on its own. Smith�s �hand� was �invisible� � the automatic
operation of the market. Mandeville�s involved �the dextrous
Management of a skilful Politician� � in modern terms, legislation,
regulation and taxation. Or as he versified it, �Vice is beneficial
found, / When it�s by Justice lopt, and bound.�

An opinion essay on May 13 about ethics and capitalism misstated the
findings of a 2010 study on psychopathy in corporations. The study
found that 4 percent of a sample of 203 corporate professionals met a
clinical threshold for being described as psychopaths, not that 10
percent of people who work on Wall Street are clinical psychopaths. In
addition, the study, in the journal Behavioral Sciences and the Law,
was not based on a representative sample; the authors of the study say
that the 4 percent figure cannot be generalized to the larger
population of corporate managers and executives.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/fables-of-wealth.html

[Ray Hall]

Anyone with a brain knows the above as fact.

Ray Hall, Taree

[gert]

On May 23, 8:51 pm, Charles Marqs <CharlesMarqs@invalid> wrote:
> Capitalists and Other Psychopaths
>
> By WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ
> Published: May 12, 2012

> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/fables-of-wealth.html

[SNIP]



May 20, 2012
The Stupid Party
by Bruce Thornton
Frontpage Magazine

The presidency of Barack Obama has established once and for all that
modern liberalism is now the stupid party. Very little of liberal
thought these days represents anything fresh or new, but rather
comprises what Lionel Trilling once reduced conservatism to:
“irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.” Now it is
liberal ideas that young in the 19th century today stumble around like
zombies in the liberal mind, mindlessly repeating hoary clichés of the
sort Jonah Goldberg documents in his new book.

Obama’s presidency and reelection campaign have already produced an
abundance of examples. Take the looming fiscal crisis of unfunded
social welfare entitlements, run-away federal spending, and
accelerating debt and deficits. Even with the monitory example of a
rapidly disintegrating Europe before our eyes, the Democrats still
can’t do the math. The “Buffett rule” taxes on the “rich” that the
president has been touting amount to the equivalent of couch-cushion
change compared to our debt and unfunded liabilities. Indeed,
confiscating outright all the wealth of the richest 400 Americans
would barely cover one year of Obama deficits. The economic history of
the past half-century backs up the math: only by reducing spending can
we get our fiscal house in order, and raising taxes on the productive
stifles economic growth and reduces tax revenues, thus hastening the
downward spiral. The fundamental wisdom known by every village
explainer — spend more than you earn and you’ll go broke, give people
something for nothing and they will expect something for nothing
forever, there is no free lunch, if something can’t go on forever it
won’t — doesn’t seem to penetrate the minds of the self-styled
“genius” party.

Yet despite this crisis, all the liberals can do is recycle old class-
warfare bromides. Repeating the juvenile slogans of the Occupy Wall
Street movement, the Democrats decry the “1%” and the President
shrieks about the rich “paying their fair share.” The fact that among
advanced economies the US already has the most progressive income
taxes and the highest corporate taxes — even as nearly half of
taxpayers pay nothing while an equal number receive some sort of
government largesse — can’t penetrate the fog of clichés befuddling
the liberal brain. No, stale Hollywood scripts about “Wall Street”
pirates and evil oil corporations are recycled into government policy,
and jeremiads against “greed” and “materialism” abound. The President
even invokes Jesus Christ in support of his redistributionist schemes,
his liberal supporters conveniently forgoing their usual hysteria
about the theocratic camel’s nose poking into the political tent.

Nothing in any of this has anything to do with the reality of our
economic sickness or its cures. Worse yet, we’ve heard it all before
over a century ago. In the late 19th century, increasing immigration
from Russia, Poland, southern Italy, and other non-Teutonic countries,
along with the growing wealth, social mobility, and economic
opportunity created by industrial capitalism, agitated the well-born
and well-educated elites worried about racial “degeneration” and the
weakening of the American order. Impressed by Karl Marx, they saw
industrial capitalism and corporations, and the increasing
materialism, amoral greed, civic corruption, and crass competition
these fostered, as the force that would destroy the American moral
order and empower the lesser breeds who thought of nothing but greed
and selfish gain, no matter the future costs to society. The
reformers’ answer was to turn over government rule to a “natural
aristocracy” created by breeding and education, the denizens of the
“best class” who could restore order to a disintegrating society and
rein in the “incorporated power and greed,” as Brooks Adams put it, of
“robber barons” like the Rockefellers and Morgans and the other
“malefactors of great wealth” criticized by T.R. Roosevelt.

The Adams brothers embody best that snobbish disdain for the ordinary
people and immigrants who were finding in an economically expanding
America the freedom and opportunity denied to their ancestors. Brooks
and Henry Adams were the scions of two presidents and an ambassador,
members of a New England aristocracy long accustomed to taking for
granted both the privileges of wealth and their own entitlement to
rule. Their opposition to industrialization and materialism was in
part based on class prejudice and refined taste, both of which
fostered a disdain for the nouveau riche and other upstarts
increasingly dominating what Mark Twain dubbed the “gilded age.” The
growing power of America could not be entrusted to these degenerate
ordinary citizens who wanted only to grab as much as they could. Only
by having their betters take over — the technocratic elite that
possessed “powerful administrative minds,” as Brooks Adams called them
— could America contain the destructive excesses of such parvenus.

Running through this gloomy economic diagnosis of America’s decline
was a nasty racialist snobbery. Brooks Adams fretted over the
“barbarian blood” polluting the “old native American blood,” which at
the time was fancifully believed to be Teutonic and Nordic. Henry too
worried that “the dark races are gaining on us.” Jews in particular
were linked to money-grubbing and materialism. “England is as much
governed by the Jews of Berlin, Paris, and New York, as her own native
growth,” Brooks Adams complained. “It is in the nature of a vast
syndicate, and by control of London, they control the world.” Henry
despised as well what he called “the rotten, unsexed, swindling, lying
Jews.” Such anti-Semitism was part of a large anti-immigrant prejudice
based on fears of what Progressive spokesman E.A. Ross called “race
suicide.”

Not much has changed in the last hundred years. Of course, this
liberal dynamic of resentment against the “vulgar” rich and obsession
over high social status has acquired new camouflage. Decrying racial
degeneration has been discredited, to be replaced with the soft racism
of low expectations enshrined in affirmative action policies and
politically correct patronizing of “people of color.” Anti-immigrant
sentiment has been reversed, now that the liberal elites have
discovered that illegal immigration in particular provides a whole new
stockpile of political clients beholden to government transfers and
the political party that delivers them. Class snobbery is usually
hidden behind a veneer of populism, though it slips out regularly —
just revisit the vicious attacks on Sarah Palin, or the President’s
talk of “bitter clingers.” And anti-Semitism, though blatant at Occupy
Wall Street rallies and anarchist protests against globalization, has
been repackaged as “anti-Zionism,” while keeping the same fantasies of
a “vast syndicate” that controls finance and the media.

Yet the essence of the liberal agenda remains the same as it was 100
years ago: Money-grubbing capitalists, the people who actually create
wealth and jobs, are still being attacked for their selfish greed;
snooty rich Ivy League grads still believe they should be running
things, given that the oafish masses are too ignorant or befuddled by
God, gays, and guns to know their own best interests; and government
must be centralized and its power increased so that these enlightened
elites can acquire the funds needed to redistribute the wealth and
create a more just and fair social order, which turns out to be one in
which they call all the shots.

In other words, a hundred years of painful experience and the failure
of these notions should demonstrate their danger. That liberals
continue to ignore those historical lessons and recycle those
discredited ideas makes them the stupid party.

©2012 Bruce S. Thornton

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/thornton052012.html

[herman]

There's something funny with people calling Obama "left wing" or
"liberal".

Obama is smack in the center, and if that too radical for you, you're
probably too far on the right.

If you use Obama's imaginary leftwing position as a way to talk about
the "danger" he poses to the nation you're crossing over into scare
demagogery.

It's funny how no one on the right was heard when Bush 2 turned the
Clinton surplus into a gigantic deficit and sent thousands of
Americans into the Iraq and Afghanistan meat grinder, for no good
reason.

And now, all of a sudden, Obama poses a threat to the nation because
the deficit is supposedly his creation?

[John Thomas]

A readership survey would probably find that 4 percent of the posters
here meet a
clinical threshold for being described as psychopaths. Keep reading
this thread for further evidence.

[Frank Berger]

It takes one to know one.

[William Sommerwerck]

Thornton is wrong about //almost// everything. In particular, he argues for
laissez-faire economics, which, of course, continually gets societies into
trouble.

The broader idea that, because freedom is A Good Thing (which it most
certainly is), that people (and businesses) should be allowed to whatever
they like, and everything will be just hunky-dory. Or if not, the results of
unbridled freedom will be morally and ethically justifiable.

I do agree that the Democrats show a general lack of common sense in
handling our current problems. The Democrats really need to position
themselves as the party of "cleaning up the messes the Republicans make" --
then actually doing something about them, rather than spending more money.

> Yet the essence of the liberal agenda remains the same as it was 100
> years ago: Money-grubbing capitalists, the people who actually create

> wealth and jobs...

No, they create jobs. They do not create wealth.

> ...are still being attacked for their selfish greed;

And they shouldn't be?

> snooty rich Ivy League grads still believe they should be running
> things, given that the oafish masses are too ignorant or befuddled
> by God, gays, and guns to know their own best interests;

In fact, most human beings (myself included) don't know what's best for
their own good. (It takes about 50 years for most of us to learn, by which
time it's too late.) Whether the elitists the writer decries //do// know is
another matter.

The fact is that human beings are in love with wealth and power. You cannot
argue in favor of "limited" government, without also arguing in favor of
limited business. Sorry, Charlie.

[Frank Berger]

>
> I do agree that the Democrats show a general lack of common sense in
> handling our current problems. The Democrats really need to position
> themselves as the party of "cleaning up the messes the Republicans
> make" -- then actually doing something about them, rather than
> spending more money.
>

But as a matter ideology, at least, that's precisely what they want to do.

[John Thomas]

As I said, they're wriggling out from under their rocks already.

[chsiii]

Who ARE these people?

"John Thomas" wrote in message
news:d42e6ffb-a11f-4705...@x6g2000pbh.googlegroups.com...

[Frank Berger]

I've not read much Marx. Did he consider capitalists to be "pyschopaths?"
Or is that John Thomas' contribution to economic theory?

[William Sommerwerck]

"Frank Berger" <frankd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:C7udnSMi_b3WDiPS...@supernews.com...

> I've not read much Marx. Did he consider capitalists to be

> "pyschopaths"? Or is that John Thomas's contribution to
> economic theory?

Considering that businesspeople too often have little regard for their
employees, their customers, or society in general -- they might reasonably
be regarded as psychopaths.

[Frank Berger]

What does "too often" mean? What percentage of businesspeople would you say
fits your description? In my 64 years I've met many businesspeople. Big
firms and small. In my experience, the bums are in the small minority. In
general, it's good business to have regard for your employees, your
customers and maybe even, whatever it means, "society in general." If a
factory pollutes the environment, it's society's job to protect those who
are, or might be damaged. By fining polluters, requiring emission controls,
whatever. It's pointless to whine that business people don't have
sufficient regard for society in general. Individuals dump their trash
along highways, in other people's back yards, etc. There's nothing special
about businesspeople in that regard.

[William Sommerwerck]

"Frank Berger" <frankd...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:gJqdnXExSOQpAiPS...@supernews.com...

> William Sommerwerck wrote:
> > "Frank Berger" <frankd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:C7udnSMi_b3WDiPS...@supernews.com...
> >
> >> I've not read much Marx. Did he consider capitalists to be
> >> "pyschopaths"? Or is that John Thomas's contribution to
> >> economic theory?
> >
> > Considering that businesspeople too often have little regard for their
> > employees, their customers, or society in general -- they might
> > reasonably be regarded as psychopaths.
>
> What does "too often" mean? What percentage of businesspeople would you
say
> fits your description? In my 64 years I've met many businesspeople. Big
> firms and small. In my experience, the bums are in the small minority. In
> general, it's good business to have regard for your employees, your
> customers and maybe even, whatever it means, "society in general."

It's not good business for the stockholders. Why do you think Costco doesn't
have much respect on Wall street.

> If a
> factory pollutes the environment, it's society's job to protect those who
> are, or might be damaged. By fining polluters, requiring emission
controls,
> whatever. It's pointless to whine that business people don't have
> sufficient regard for society in general. Individuals dump their trash
> along highways, in other people's back yards, etc. There's nothing
special
> about businesspeople in that regard.

Your response is basically "Everybody does it -- so why single out business
people?"

[edo...@gmail.com]

My guess is that they're trying to revive RMO!!! ;-)

Ed

[Frank Berger]

William Sommerwerck wrote:


> "Frank Berger" <frankd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:gJqdnXExSOQpAiPS...@supernews.com...
>> William Sommerwerck wrote:
>>> "Frank Berger" <frankd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:C7udnSMi_b3WDiPS...@supernews.com...
>>>
>>>> I've not read much Marx. Did he consider capitalists to be
>>>> "pyschopaths"? Or is that John Thomas's contribution to
>>>> economic theory?
>>>
>>> Considering that businesspeople too often have little regard for
>>> their employees, their customers, or society in general -- they
>>> might reasonably be regarded as psychopaths.
>>
>> What does "too often" mean? What percentage of businesspeople would
>> you say fits your description? In my 64 years I've met many
>> businesspeople. Big firms and small. In my experience, the bums
>> are in the small minority. In general, it's good business to have
>> regard for your employees, your customers and maybe even, whatever
>> it means, "society in general."
>
> It's not good business for the stockholders. Why do you think Costco
> doesn't have much respect on Wall street.
>

I don't know anything about Costco.

If a business behaves badly enough, vis a vis "society in general," like it
severely pollutes a river or something, or it's employees all get black
lung, it gets really, really bad press. That doesn't hurt its reputation,
its sales and its stockholders? Answer: It does.

>> If a
>> factory pollutes the environment, it's society's job to protect
>> those who are, or might be damaged. By fining polluters, requiring
>> emission controls, whatever. It's pointless to whine that business
>> people don't have sufficient regard for society in general.
>> Individuals dump their trash along highways, in other people's back
>> yards, etc. There's nothing special about businesspeople in that
>> regard.
>
> Your response is basically "Everybody does it -- so why single out
> business people?"

That was a small part of my response. But yes.

[Frank Berger]

Rocky Mountain Orthodontics?
Replication Management Objects?
Resident Medical Officer?
?
?

[herman]

On 25 mai, 01:00, "Frank Berger" <frankdber...@gmail.com> wrote:


>
> If a business behaves badly enough, vis a vis "society in general," like it
> severely pollutes a river or something, or it's employees all get black
> lung, it gets really, really bad press.  That doesn't hurt its reputation,
> its sales and its stockholders?  Answer: It does.
>

Ça depend. If this polluting company makes generous donations to both
political parties at several levels and help write legislation it may
actually thrive and become, in a way, more powerful than government,
give its name to major performing arts centers and just continue
polluting and treating employees badly, as long as it happens far from
NYC and DC.

[Frank Berger]

Then the blame in this case lies as much or more with the corrupt
politicians, doesn't it? And if polticians weren't so powerful, meaning if
the government didn't control so many damned resources, there would be less
scope for corruption of this sort.

[William Sommerwerck]

> > Ça depend. If this polluting company makes generous donations to both
> > political parties at several levels and help write legislation it may
> > actually thrive and become, in a way, more powerful than government,
> > give its name to major performing arts centers and just continue
> > polluting and treating employees badly, as long as it happens far from
> > NYC and DC.
>
> Then the blame in this case lies as much or more with the corrupt
> politicians, doesn't it? And if polticians weren't so powerful, meaning
if
> the government didn't control so many damned resources, there would be
less
> scope for corruption of this sort.

That is utterly bass-ackwards reasoning. We reduce corruption by weakening
government? You mean we're supposed to let "business" do whatever it wants
to?

[Frank Berger]

Not weakening. Shrinking it's command over influences. Look this is not
rocket science. In the limit of concentration of power, an abolute
monarchy, the king can give every single government construction job to his
brother in law. You can have laws, and enforcement, against theft, fraud,
etc, without the government running everything.

[Christopher Webber]

On 25/05/2012 18:49, Frank Berger wrote:
> You can have laws, and enforcement, against theft, fraud, etc, without
> the government running everything.

Contradiction in terms: "government" by definition consists of these
three arms - legislature, executive AND judicial.

So if your laws are being enforced, you already have government. And the
government is totally responsible for the judicial (even, I'm told, in
the Land of the Free...)

[William Sommerwerck]

"Frank Berger" <frankd...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:a8ednawEPtOwWyLS...@supernews.com...

You're correct, but only from a narrow perspective.

Limiting government will not, in and of itself, prevent business -- or
individuals -- from behaving unethically, immorally, or simply in ways that
aren't good for society as a whole.

And please don't tell me you don't want "elitists" dictating what is or is
not acceptable. Any two "reasonable" people, regardless of their political
persuasions, would largely agree on what is right or wrong for society.

[Frank Berger]

No contradiction. I didn't say *no* government. My saying "without the
government is running everything" (admittedly hyperbolic)
means I accept the government is running *something*, like courts, police,
etc.

[Frank Berger]

William Sommerwerck wrote:
> "Frank Berger" <frankd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:a8ednawEPtOwWyLS...@supernews.com...
>> William Sommerwerck wrote:

>>>>> �a depend. If this polluting company makes generous donations to

>>>>> both political parties at several levels and help write
>>>>> legislation it may actually thrive and become, in a way, more
>>>>> powerful than government, give its name to major performing arts
>>>>> centers and just continue polluting and treating employees badly,
>>>>> as long as it happens far from NYC and DC.
>>>>
>>>> Then the blame in this case lies as much or more with the corrupt
>>>> politicians, doesn't it? And if polticians weren't so powerful,
>>>> meaning if the government didn't control so many damned resources,
>>>> there would be less scope for corruption of this sort.
>>>
>>> That is utterly bass-ackwards reasoning. We reduce corruption by
>>> weakening government?
>>
>> Not weakening. Shrinking it's command over influences. Look this
>> is not rocket science. In the limit of concentration of power, an
>> abolute monarchy, the king can give every single government
>> construction job to his brother in law. You can have laws, and
>> enforcement, against theft, fraud, etc, without the government
>> running everything.
>
> You're correct, but only from a narrow perspective.
>
> Limiting government will not, in and of itself,

I didn't say it would. Are you familiar with the term "ceteris paribus?"

> prevent business -- or
> individuals -- from behaving unethically, immorally, or simply in
> ways that aren't good for society as a whole.
>
> And please don't tell me you don't want "elitists" dictating what is
> or is not acceptable. Any two "reasonable" people, regardless of
> their political persuasions, would largely agree on what is right or
> wrong for society.

You seem to not want to even understand my point. The greater the
concentration of power in the government, *everything else the same*, the
greater the possibility of corruption occuring.

[William Sommerwerck]

> You seem to not want to even understand my point.

Cannot is more like it.

> The greater the concentration of power in the government,
> *everything else the same*, the greater the possibility of
> corruption occuring.

I don't see your reasoning. The concentration of power invites corruption
//anywhere//.

[Bob Harper]

Precisely.

Bob Harper

[Christopher Webber]

On 25/05/2012 20:42, Frank Berger wrote:
> No contradiction. I didn't say *no* government. My saying "without the
> government is running everything" (admittedly hyperbolic)
> means I accept the government is running *something*, like courts,
> police, etc.

Can you name or define anything government (i.e. the executive part of
the triple-headed watchdog) runs *without* judicial imprimatur, from
laws and regulations passed by the legislature, added to legal
precedents from the judicial arm itself?

If you can't (which by the tripartite definition of "government you
can't) then your position is contradictory I'm afraid - quite
irrespective of making any allowance for "hyperbolic" expression, it
simply makes no sense.